"Well," I inquired, "what was she?"
"That's what puzzled Washington and the State Department for several months," replied Quinn. "It's too long a story to spin to-night. That's her picture up there, if you care to study her features."
And I went home wondering what were the crimes of which such a beautiful woman could have been guilty.
XXIII
THE CASE OF MRS. ARMITAGE
To look at him no one would have thought that Bill Quinn had a trace of sentiment in his make-up. Apparently he was just the grizzled old veteran of a hundred battles with crime, the last of which—a raid on a counterfeiter's den in Long Island—had laid him up with a game leg and a soft berth in the Treasury Department, where, for years he had been an integral part of the United States Secret Service.
But in the place of honor in Quinn's library-den there hung the photograph of a stunningly handsome woman, her sable coat thrown back just enough to afford a glimpse of a throat of which Juno might have been proud, while in her eyes there sparkled a light which seemed to hint at much but reveal little. It was very evident that she belonged to a world entirely apart from that of Quinn, yet the very fact that her photograph adorned the walls of his den proved that she had been implicated in some case which had necessitated Secret Service investigation—for the den was the shrine of relics relating to cases in which Quinn's friends had figured.
Finally, one evening I gathered courage to inquire about her.